Iron Fortification, Disease, and Obesity: An Update with Data Refinements

Why does fortified food so strongly correlate with poor health and obesity in developed countries? After our 6,000 word post hashing out the possibilities, we thought it was time to simplify the message. Quite simply it’s because fortification promotes an imbalance of micronutrients that would otherwise not happen when consuming a diet of whole foods. It is a government policy that does far more harm in developed nations than good.

To put this iron increase in perspective, a 2012 study showed that a fortification level of only 13mg/pound (30mg/kg) of flour—which is roughly what US iron fortification levels were at during the 1950s and 1960s—resulted in increased oxidative stress for non-anemic men. This obviously calls the safety of even low level of iron fortification into question. Obviously fortification of flour at 40mg/pound was a very risky experiment.

The FDA’s decision to drastically increase iron fortification levels from ~13mg/pound of flour to 40mg/pound of flour was later rescinded due to an outcry from iron toxicologists. In our article, we focused on the 1983 FDA final ruling of 20mg of iron per pound of flour, mainly because we didn’t find much evidence for the 1970s implementation. However, we recently uncovered two charts that show that the 1970s ruling to 40mg/pound of flour was fully implemented for a few years across the United States.

As you can see, we the people are lab rats in a nation-wide experiment. Fortification certainly didn’t making us healthier than non-fortified countries. No, the opposite actually happened. It appears to be harming us by exacerbating a micronutrient imbalance and promoting pathogenic gut profiles, even at low doses.

The timing of these charts appears to explain why one study estimated that there is a ten-year lag from fortification increases to increased incidence of obesity.

A Clarification on “Mandated” Fortification

While the UK and Canada do require certain products to be fortified, the FDA does not actually “mandate” fortification, but rather strongly suggests that manufacturers fortify products, and the FDA publishes “guiding principles” for the levels and labeling of fortified products. However, it is unclear (to us) if states that passed the Newfoundland Law do still in fact require fortification in certain products. Nevertheless, enriched food is ubiquitous in the American diet. However, this may be good news for Americans as consumers will have the option to demand non-fortified products if the word gets out and people realize that their health improves by avoiding fortified foods. Fortification costs money, and manufacturers will gladly eliminate the costs of fortification if consumers want to avoid it. All it takes is for Americans to become aware of the problems with fortification. You can help by spreading the word via the share links at the bottom of the post. Far & Wide, if you please.

Links to Refined Oils

Traditionally, many scientists and health gurus have pointed out that refined oils—like those from soy that are high in linoleic acid (LA)—a polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acid—have been linked to obesity epidemic. We believe this fits perfectly into the exacerbation of micronutrient imbalances found in obesity. We found evidence that a diet high in refined oils might just make you absorb lots of iron, which in excess can promote oxidative stress in organs and tissues. The following chart from this article shows the trend.

Obese people have iron deposits in their brains, and iron deposits in their adipocytes, but they can appear to be anemic. Curiously, researchers don’t know why populations with the highest iron intakes have the most obesity, the most metabolic issues, as well as disruptions of iron homeostasis that come with those chronic diseases. But, with the help of Dr. Jane Karlsson, PhD—who has spent over 30 years reading biomedical literature, full time—we are working on a plausible and testable mechanism that we hope to reveal soon. The end result is that the pieces of the biological mystery are neatly fitting together, as you would expect from a jigsaw puzzle that is nearing completion. All of the pieces are falling right into place.

What does this mean? It means the biology as a whole fits together—just as you’d expect. But not as the molecular biologists of 30 years ago expected. They thought Richard Dawkins was right and biology was messy, because of evolution. You could see the mess everywhere, in epidemics of degenerative disease which were, they thought, due to faulty genes. Biotech and the human genome project was advertised as the technology that would save humanity.

Actually, this idea that genes were mainly responsible for modern disease had actually been tested, and shown to be incorrect. Nearly 100 years ago, Sir Robert McCarrison, lectured before the Royal College of Surgeons on the spectacularly healthy Hunza in northern India (now Pakistan), and did experiments on rats to find out whether their health was due to their diet. In his experiments, rats on a Hunza diet were just as healthy as the Hunza—free of all modern illnesses. Whereas, rats that consumed a refined and modern Western diet became sick and diseased.

McCarrison’s findings were echoed by Dr. Weston A. Price (1870—1948), a dentist who found that, regardless of macronutrient intake, healthy traditional cultures avoided degenerative diseases by eating wide variety of whole foods and became sick and diseased on refined foods. And it was further explained by Dr. William A. Albrecht, PhD (1888—1974)—the Father of Modern Soil Science— who established the concept that it takes a universal balance of minerals in soil to have healthy plants, and healthy plants to have healthy animals (or people).

Quite literally, the unifying principle between these great thinkers is that it’s the refinement and unbalanced consumption of micronutrients that promote many modern diseases. Perhaps this isn’t all that surprising, since all metabolic cycles depend on a similar balance of these micronutrients. Stay tuned.

Weight Loss Was Easier 30 Years Ago

The evidence correlating fortification and obesity continues to pile up. Recently The Atlantic published an article on a recent paper on “Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s.” It really isn’t the best article, but it explains that people didn’t need to exercise as much back then to lose weight. Nobody knows why. The authors hypothesize on the many factors that could explain this paradox, but the scientists they interviewed completely missed fortification as a possible reason. Prescription drug abuse and antibiotics are offered as a reason, but the authors did not realize that the drug/obesity theory is easily debunked by populations like France. France has the highest level of prescription drug abuse in the world, and is addicted to antibiotics, yet it has one of the lowest obesity rates of any developed nation.

No one seems to notice that fortification is the one variable that can explain virtually every paradox. We believe fortified individuals are now far more saturated with a mineral imbalance that is now much harder to reverse than it was 30 years ago.

Gorilla Diets and Fortified Food

Finally, we thought we would mention an old story that is relevant to all this. In 2011, it was reported that gorillas at zoos were succumbing to human diseases like heart disease. Nobody could figure out why, especially considering that gorillas were eating a fortified diet that gave lots of the nutrients they needed. The researchers believed that the heart disease could be stopped by switching captive gorillas back to their natural diets in the wild. A surprising thing happened:

“Going back to this natural diet has changed gorilla behavior. Before, gorillas only ate during a quarter of their day because the food was so packed with nutrients. Now at Cleveland, they spend 50-60 percent of their day eating which is the same amount as in the wild. With all this extra eating, the gorillas have doubled their caloric intake, yet at the same time have dropped 65 pounds each. This brings their weight more in line with their wild relatives.”

Yes, the fortified zoo biscuits were promoting chronic disease and weight gain in the animals. Once zookeepers replaced their biscuits with whole plants, the gorillas regained their health and stopped a lot of behaviors associated with captivity (pulling hair out, aggression, etc). It’s yet another nail in the coffin of fortified foods.

While we continue to outline the mechanism between micronutrient imbalance and obesity, please take a moment to Tweet and Like the condensed and abridged article on Medium.com.

Reader Interactions

Comments

THIS:
In other words, they use the dynamics of markets (curtail supply and prices rise) in order to defeat FREE markets. They can’t compete with free markets at the wages and prices they wish, so they use the force of state to make it artificial.

MEETS THIS:
The evidence correlating fortification and obesity continues to pile up. Recently The Atlantic published an article on a recent paper on “Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s.” It really isn’t the best article, but it explains that people didn’t need to exercise as much back then to lose weight. Nobody knows why. The authors hypothesize on the many factors that could explain this paradox, but the scientists they interviewed completely missed fortification as a possible reason.

You think they all really don’t know? Or they all CHOOSE not to notice. :-)

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

The French are not known to be overly active or partake in intense exercise (beyond cultural activities). So, does a 6% energy intake explain why we are the most obese country and they have one of lowest levels of obesity of any developed nation? No. Something is not right.

Now, let’s take a look at the FAOSTAT calorie intake per capita data during the 1980s-90s obesity epidemic…

Pretty amazing. According to FAOSTAT, when the US was having rapidly rising obesity, France was actually consuming more calories per day than American were! And towards the end of the obesity epidemic, we were only consuming 100 more calories per capita/day than the French.

Now, we have to take this data with a grain of salt. Although FAO tracks food waste, this data is based on commodities data and it’s unclear how accurate or representative it may be of actual intakes.

But still, I can’t find much evidence that we consume significantly more food than the French when we were having our obesity epidemic. And the data suggests France was actually consuming more calories than us when we were becoming morbidly obese. This all implies that something else is causing obesity—not pure CICO.

In our upcoming post, we will show how the scientific literature explains how a mineral imbalance (exacerbated by fortification) can promote rapid adipocyte formation. So, hopefully that will offer an explanation for this paradox.

Well, pretty much meaningless unless you know what causes it. Nobody knows. CICO doesn’t appear to explain the stark differences between the populations. But, I’m willing to acknowledge that the FAO data might be wonky. If you know of a better source, let’s hear it.

Why not? It’s just a loose observation that suggests we might be on to something. We are going to demonstrate an explanation for these paradoxes. Far better than anybody else is doing by just shrugging shoulders and blaming it on things that don’t hold water across various populations.

DD, I think you and Richard are more than on to something. When Richard first hinted that he had a new article in the works that was going to take the argument in a new direction and it was about explaining all the paradoxes, etc. I was very anxious to read what it was. My theory all along about the “wheat” thing was it was the oils, i.e. soy oil, that they were making bread stuff out of that was making the difference in how modern folks processed flour based products. I knew soy to be a gigantic endocrine disruptor and from watching Julia Child that when lard and beef tallow was replaced by veggie oils, then things changed. I was wrong about the big change — iron fortification and the other vitamin fortification, but now you are hinting at how these supposedly ‘healthy’ oils exacerbate the uptake of iron. Good stuff!!!
I grew up eating a lot of wheat products. There were five kids and we ate lots of cereal, sandwiches, and spaghetti. This was the 60’s and 70’s. When I got married, we were poor grad students so our diet was a lot of potatoes and pasta. We were very thin. When I look at photos of myself and my husband, I don’t see skeletal people, I see thin people with some muscle tone and vibrance to them. Nowadays if someone was as thin as we were, they would look like addicts. I don’t know if all the carbs we ate along with other stuff made the difference, but it didn’t look weird to see us that thin.
Keep these posts and observations coming, especially about the French. I love French food. I think the surface of all of this is just beginning to be scraped and several more sacred nutrition cows are headed for the abbatoir.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

If I could sum up the DD collaboration it is that this id the first thing that does not simply ignore population falsifications.

Low carb is so ridiculously falsified only religious people in the church of Jimmy could believe it.

And now Paleo if generally falsified. Not the grains, per se. Unfortunately, thats their largest principle of all. Shed that, and you’re whole foods or Mediterranain, and life is way better, more flexible, simpler and more enjoyable.

“you’re whole foods or Mediterranain, and life is way better, more flexible, simpler and more enjoyable.”

Yes this exactly! I started Paleo (with keto) about 10 years ago, probably following you or following you soon after, and it solved a lot of the problems I was having. Then I followed your whole gut flora thing and that helped more. Your suggestion for soil-based probiotics cured my husbands and many of my friends’ allergies, by the way. I started eating more starches and prebiotics, and now I eat more Mediterranean. I call it post-paleo :)

I think keto was good at first to starve my bad gut flora, which I suspect is the cause of “carb flu”: you feel sluggish and bad because of the biofilms being released into your system. Then paleo was good for a while because of the high fat and simple foods, adding in rice and starches later helped my sleep, and now I eat normal (mainly home cooked) foods and I stay thin and feel great. Life is so much better when your diet is not restrictive, although I do think the process I went through to get to where I am today was a good one and very beneficial.

“McCollum was involved in many policy debates including one over the best strategy to fortify bread. He had shown, and publicized, that white bread was nutritionally deficient. With the development of synthetic vitamins, it was proposed that bread and flour be enriched with thiamin, niacin, and iron. This effort was lead by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. McCollum was a member of the Board but disagreed and was strongly critical of the recommendation because supplementation with such nutrients failed to make up for all the losses suffered during milling wheat. As a result of his disagreement with the other members of the Board, his Board colleagues changed his status from Board member to panel member. As a panel member he was not invited to any of the Board meetings.”

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

Excellent find, FrenchFry. I’ve been trying to figure out how they settled on such an imbalance when according to this link (which we cited in the article, above), the National Food Board made a point that fortification should not promote an imbalance. But that’s exactly what they ended up doing. The board settled on only fortifying the most “essential” nutrients and that meant iron, but no other minerals. Given McCollum’s dissent, it seems that the decision was not unanimous.

Yeah, it’s so bizarre actually: here was a guy who knew his shit, proved that refined wheat bread was nutritionally deficient and needed to be improved to overcome the nutritional losses. Then a bunch of guys decided that the missing nutrients were this and that, not more. The first guy said “NO, you also need X, Y Z, because of the damages introduced by the milling”, but instead of listening to the one guy who knew what was needed, they showed him out of the decision room.

Smells like some people needed quick shortcuts at a cheapest cost to claim that white bread was made more nutritionally relevant. If such moronic decision making has been the standard for all these years, no wonder we are in this mess today …

So this seems like really important information, hopefully there’s a lot more reality to back this up than that wheat belly scare, remember when we used to say whole grain was just as bad as refined sugar. Anyway if we can be so sure then let’s get the word out, that’s the most important thing.

Not to distract from all that but I’d really like to know why then? Just incompetence? It seems to me that a lot of deliberate strategy effected through the plausible deniability afforded by the undeniable incompetence of government.

I actually passed this article on and someone responded: “No mention of high fructose corn syrup (pure sugar) in everything or the proliferation of fast food “Supersize me”” How do you answer?

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

If you followed it, it was the construction of a narrative. The narrative now has capital value from lots of investment (I contributed) and now all people need do is pitch a product or service with a legitimate Paleo tag.

It’s not awful. Don’t get me wrong. It is, rather, what it is and it’s the way stuff works. I’ve lost friendships over it.

Eric said: “No mention of high fructose corn syrup (pure sugar) in everything or the proliferation of fast food “Supersize me”” How do you answer?”

We already covered the link between HFCS and iron in our initial post. If you read that post, you’ll see some evidence that HFCS may significantly increase iron absorption.

Eric said: “I mean why is the FDA recommending all that iron, what’s behind that? We may never know, there are many mysteries.”

Part of me wants to believe that this is some great conspiracy. And truth be told, there are accusations in JAMA that McGovern “invented” the data that there was a supposed anemia epidemic (there is no epidemic of anemia in unfortified developed countries). It would make a great movie.

But, in reality, I think that this is just a product of government failure. I imagine people with good intentions who basically come to a remarkably dumb conclusion (in retrospect).

A tiny subset of the population is prone to anemia, and it’s easy for a politician to claim victory against this by dumping large quantities of iron into the food supply. The unintended consequences are just brushed under the rug and nobody notices. That’s just how bureaucracy and governments work. In a sane world, those few anemic individuals would just be treated individually.

What nobody realizes is that anemia is messy—it’s not necessarily caused by an inability to acquire iron. Quite often it can be caused by other factors—like micronutrient deficiencies (copper for instance). These nuances are too complex and individualized for governments to solve. But they try to solve them anyway, and the policy fails despite the fact that 100 years go by and nobody notices the obvious correlations between fortification and poor health.

Interestingly there have been studies on rats showing the deleterious effects of fortification, though I assume these were dismissed by the FDA for whatever reason.

As to why they put so much iron into fortified foods, it’s because fortified (non-heme) iron is so poorly absorbed and they can’t really use heme iron because it’s absorbed too well and rather toxic. Most of the fortified iron just hits the colon and causes problems there.

Anemia IS messy. My mother and sister are walking examples. Both excrete iron at a rapid rate … my Mom to her skin, and my sister to her hair. You can see it! But both are anemic, with very low iron levels in their blood. As a result, probably, they are in rather good shape blood-sugar-wise. They both take iron supplements, which they swear make them feel better.

My aunt though, would draw her own blood to bring down her iron levels, because she said they were too high. She never explained why exactly, but I’m pretty sure our family doesn’t handle iron well.

Now, if you get ANY meat in your diet at all, you should not need iron supplements. But if you do eat meat with fortified starches, the iron filings are more absorbable, due to the heme iron and saturated fat. Ditto for some odd things, like soda pop and fruit juice. Other foods tend to block iron, such as tea and milk.

Anyway, thanks for getting this information out. I think it IS important and it’s a kind of unified field theorem of food right now. Adding iron to food was a stupid mistake, but at least it’s an easy one to fix.

As the world gets more secular and distances from doGs, the void has to be filled with something.

Arguably, Europe is better at that since they largely put religion to the side but for personal proclivities decades ago. Perhaps the devastation of two world wars at home put the wonder of doG in a certain context.

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

France is generally considered way more socialist than the U.S. but they don’t put iron fillings in the food. I don’t think there is such a simple idealogical explanation here, but I could be wrong, I really have no idea, except maybe it’s related to fluoride in the water. I don’t think anyone ever really believed that was a communist plot, that’s just a straw man argument meant to distract attention from what’s really going on, whatever that may be.

I can see how it works for the marketing slogan in the image at the top of this post. Maybe these companies started enriching 100 years ago and later influenced the FDA to put out recommendations that matched what they were doing pretty cheaply and easily already. Then they could turn around and say look at our wonderful product that complies with all recommendations of a serious government agency like the FDA. I just wonder why they pushed for even more fortification, unless that was another marketing slogan at some point, like “now with even more fortification!” I think a lot of this marketing isn’t only to get people to buy this brand over other brands, but also maybe even more importantly to get people who already buy this brand to incorporate more of it into their diets and buy more.

Fortification was invented in the 1920s and introduced in the 1930s, but it wasn’t that popular at first. Part of the problem was that fortification increased the price of bread—particularly when it was first introduced—and bakeries did not like to sell products that had higher costs. Nor did consumers enjoy paying more for bread.

So, I don’t think that this was something the baking industry wanted. More likely, they only agreed to do it once governments encouraged it, the price of fortification dropped, and a demand appeared.

The 1970s fortification bump was done to try and “cure” a manufactured anemia problem. In reality there was no major anemia problem (nor is there any anemia problem in unfortified developed countries).

Crosby accuses the government of inventing an anemia problem and falsifying data, and pushed through by McGovern.

The entire nations seems to have forgotten about the controversy. It would make a great investigative journalism piece if someone had the interest in looking into it. I’ll bet with a Freedom of Information Act, someone could uncover a great story.

One other thing that I’ve pondered is why copper was not included in the formulation? Even 100 years ago, it was known that copper was essential for curing anemia.

So, if governments truly wanted to cure anemia, they would have added copper to the fortification formula. I imagine that copper was left out because it was being rationed during the war. It would have been too rare and expensive to be used as an additive for food. And I’ll bet bakeries and consumers were unwilling to pay for it.

At the time, people were supposed to be rationing copper to support the war effort. Even the US Mint didn’t have enough copper to mint pennies. That’s why the steel penny was used.

Well I’m not trying to promote any wild conspiracy theories or anything but maybe these pharmaceutical companies are behind many public policies that ultimately lead to increases in chronic conditions. Apparently pharmaceuticals for treating diabetes and obesity are a major focus for some companies these days. This is just a highly speculative hypothesis, not even close to an actual theory. Just because institutional incompetence is very plausible doesn’t mean it’s necessarily the ultimate cause. Again we may never know for sure.

The iron super-enrichment controversy which has been simmering for several years shows signs of coming to a boil once again. Five years ago the Food and Drug Administration proposed to require a three-fold increase in the amount of iron presently added to bakery products. The American Bakers Association has renewed its request to the Food and Drug Commissioner this regulation while many physicians have steadfastly opposed the adoption of such a ruling.

ABA is leading the “Grain Chain” in promoting the healthy benefits of grains to the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). The Grain Chain is meeting with agency representatives and members of Congress who are influential to the completion of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines to educate them on the importance of whole and enriched grains in the American diet.

To speak on behalf of the Grain Chain, ABA secured Joanne Slavin, RD, PhD, and Professor for Nutrition Science at the University of Minnesota. The insight and counsel of Dr. Slavin, a member of the 2010 DGAC, have been invaluable. Delivering expert testimony before DGAC, she emphasized support for the current guidelines (six servings with half being whole grains) and the nutritional benefits of whole and enriched grains. Slavin highlighted opportunities with vitamin D and grains as an important source of fiber and iron. Her testimony also emphasized the need for additional research before changing current sodium recommendations.

ABA will continue its work to ensure grains remain the largest “plate portion” of the new MyPlate icon.

Slavin actually wrote a few good papers on the role of phytochemicals in whole grains, but it’s sad to see that she’s a shill for the ABA’s enrichment plan.

So, the ABA appears to be the ones who fucked up the food supply and potentially triggered the obesity epidemic with their “iron super-enrichment” that did nothing to cure a non-existant anemia epidemic.

Yes, so it appears this is about money.

In order to secure a larger spot on the Food Pyramid (now the “MyPlate” icon), I think they figured that super-enrichment would allow them to secure that spot and peddle more enriched junk white flour to the public.

The American Bakers Association hosted a Congressional reception last week to celebrate one of the top ten health achievements of the century – the fortification of Enriched Grains with Folic Acid. Nearly 70 guests attended the reception, including ABA members, allied supporters and staff representatives from Senate and House offices.

Enrichment is, without a doubt, a product of the ABA, and a coalition known as “The Grain Chain”.

The Grain Chain endorses maintaining the 2010 DGAC grain consumption recommendation that Americans consume six servings daily with at least half of all grains as whole grains. We also urge the Committee to continue to recognize the valuable role of enriched grains in a healthy diet, a key component of which is fortification with folic acid, in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines.

The government committee that creates the scientific report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) groups refined and enriched grains together. The ABA and the “Grain Chain” testified to convince the committee to reconsider this.

“The American Bakers Association (ABA) greatly appreciates Dr. Glenn Gaesser’s balanced testimony on behalf of the Grain Chain Coalition,” said Lee Sanders, ABA Senior Vice President, Government Relations and Public Affairs. Dr. Gaesser, PhD, a Professor and Director of the Healthy Lifestyles Research Center at Arizona State University, testified on the recently released Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC).

“The Committee’s coupling of enriched grains with refined grains, and the recommendation for reduced consumption of refined grains adversely impacts the notable health benefits of fortified enriched grains for women and infant health,” said ABA President & CEO Robb MacKie. “Dr. Gaesser rightly pointed out the flaws in the DGAC’s approach to grains.”

Dr. Gaesser highlighted the important health gains due to folic acid fortification of flour in his testimony. Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated folic acid fortification of enriched grains in 1998, there has been a 36 percent decrease in the incidence of American infants born with neural tube defects including spinal bifida and anencephaly. A success that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called one of the top ten health achievements of the decade.

Dr. Gaesser also highlighted the important contribution of other vital, under-consumed nutrients that grain foods provide including B vitamins, fiber, and iron. Grains like bread, rolls, buns, pasta, and cereal contribute 44 percent of all fiber to the American diet.

“While ABA agrees the DGAC’s call for to make half your grains whole, it is important for HHS and USDA to clearly inform the public of the health benefits provided by both enriched and whole grain foods, which the DGAC has unfortunately misrepresented in its report,” added MacKie.

Since the absolute difference is minuscule, it would seem that fortification isn’t really about curing rare birth defects—they are simply trying to make their product sound more appealing to the people who make the official dietary guidelines.

During the 1950s, the AMA helped the “Wheat Flour Institute” advertise enriched bread as an ideal weight loss food. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect.

By the 1970s, Americans begun to perceive that grains were making them fat, and therefore grain consumption was declining. (Of course, this wasn’t the case in France and other European nations). This was problematic because the research overwhelmingly showed that (whole) grains were healthy. Something had to be done.

From the ABA’s perspective, Americans were already addicted to white flour, and it wanted to find a way to include refined grains in these dietary guidelines so that they could promote the consumption of refined grains.

Enrichment is not about making refined products healthier. Rather, the push to enrich grains was nothing more than a way to sneak refined grains into the government’s dietary recommendations.

I also found that the push to increase grain consumption was well supported by the literature when these dietary guidelines were being solidified.

For instance, this chart appeared in one of the documents put forth by the committee. It shows that carb consumption had gone down since 1909, which was used to explain why people’s health had deteriorated since then. They figured that if they increased starch consumption, people would regain their health and lose weight. But the opposite happened.

Sorry, wrong link. That chart showed how complex carbs were being replaced with sugar. Here is the chart the USDA used showing carb consumption going down over much of the 20th century (replaced with fat), before the dietary guidelines were written.

“Hillary Clinton has said she is proud to have drug companies as her enemies – but she is also taking their money. Lots of it.

The Clinton campaign received far more money from the drug and medical device industries than any other presidential candidate in either party during the first six months of the campaign, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. She accepted $164,315 during that period.”

@Duck Dodgers
Wow thanks for digging all that up, though part of me thinks this ABA thing is just a front for something even deeper. On the other hand personal experience has shown how totally uncreative business owner types go to great lengths to do really stupid things out of fear of losing potential business. They all think they’re such experts in crowd psychology. It’s fun to see Silicone valley types run circles around them, i.e. Uber, AirBnb, etc…

Reply link does not work in your browser because JavaScript is disabled.Reply

Primary Sidebar

ABOUT

I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003 and as of 2018, contains over 4,600 posts and 110,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

Please consider supporting this Blog by CLICKING HERE whenever you shop Amazon. Costs you nothing but sure does help out.